Thanks Wolf. Humans don't have to be "Mighty Hunters" to wipe out species. The Maoris who arrived here were hardly in that category yet they wiped out dozens of species. I suspect very few species have died out through hunting. It's precipitous ecological change that stuffs them up. Maoris brought in the rat and the dog, and fire. Cook remarked on the widespread fires here as he moved along the coast, many of them far inland where it is now obvious virtually no Maoris lived.
The Australian Aborigines were also hardly mighty hunters yet a huge number of species died out soon after humans arrived there. Anyway we've been through all this before on another thread.
Regarding the books. There is a big market here for books that claim to provide evidence the Maori were not the first people here. Everything is proposed with all sorts of imaginary evidence: Phoenicians, Celts, Egyptians. Seems enough people doubt the scientists version of our history to provide a good market for such books. In my previous post I was specifically thinking of the book "1421 the year China discovered the world". Big seller but totally imaginary evidence for an ancient Chinese presence in NZ. But that's another subject.
